Decision Maker Response

Linus Torvalds’s response

Sep 9, 2013 — Where do I start a petition to raise the IQ and kernel knowledge of people?

Guys, go read drivers/char/random.c. Then, learn about cryptography. Finally, come back here and admit to the world that you were wrong.

Short answer: we actually know what we are doing. You don't.

Long answer: we use rdrand as _one_ of many inputs into the random pool, and we use it as a way to _improve_ that random pool. So even if rdrand were to be back-doored by the NSA, our use of rdrand actually improves the quality of the random numbers you get from /dev/random.